What’s new in Firefox 8 for end users and developers

New features for end users

Externally installed add-ons off by default: Add-ons installed by external applications must be explicitly switched on by the user. Quoting “Strengthening User Control of Add-ons” by Justin Scott for the Mozilla Add-ons Blog:

But users aren’t the only ones who love adding on to Firefox: third-party applications frequently install bundled add-ons into Firefox as part of their own installation process. While some of these applications seek the user’s permission beforehand, others install add-ons into Firefox without checking to make sure the user actually wants them.
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If Firefox starts and finds that another program has installed an add-on, Firefox will disable the add-on until the user has explicitly opted in to the addition.

Twitter becomes part of the search bar: It is now one of the default search engines available via the search text field in the navigation bar.

Loading restored tabs on demand: When windows are restored, you have the option to only load tabs that are currently visible. The remaining tabs will be loaded on demand, when they are activated.

New features for developers

Load cross-domain textures in WebGL, thanks to CORS support.

Support for HTML5 context menus. They add items to the browser context menu of an element. Example: